Why US imports are superior to UK domestic dvds!

A

Anonymous

Guest
So why are US imports are superior to UK domestic dvds?

There is absolutely no benefit to buying something in the UK (well... apart from the convienence of it being in a local shop where you will likely pay full retail price ).

Importing from the USA beats the UK at everything...

* Cheaper Price
* More "Extras" (collectors boxes, limited edition items etc.)
* More Choice
* Available Earlier
* Better Video Quality (surely i can't be the only person to notice the horrible PAL conversions that 99% of companies do to the UK release DVD's)

Why support an inferior product when you can import it from the USA for half or even quarter the price they are charging here in the UK. Here are some examples:

Example 1 - PROJECT A-KO :

CHEAPEST UK PRICE - £11.99 at Play.com

CHEAPEST USA PRICE - £3.25


Example 2 - MILLENIUM ACTRESS

CHEAPEST UK PRICE - £11.99 at Play.com

CHEAPEST USA PRICE - £4.85

Example 2 - NEON GENESIS PLATINUM BOXSET

CHEAPEST UK PRICE - £72.99 at Play.com

CHEAPEST USA PRICE - £27.51
 
The reason why US DVD's have more stuff then UK is because the US market is much bigger and more richer then the UK market, but the UK market is growing. As you can see they have more DVD's released then it was like years ago, also some DVD's have gone slightly cheaper. Just hope the UK market can catch up with the US in a few years time lol.
 
It's not the 'most' important thing but box art and packaging can make a difference. Look at the art for Ghost in the Shell 2 for the US and compare it with the UK one (which comes in a very nice card sleeve too). Also all the Stand Alone Complex volumes come in nice card sleeve too, and i recently got the Evangelion Platinium thin pak from the US and i though the packaging was quite cheap and nasty.

Not that important i know but still.

Also not eveyone has a multi region DVD player, i know they are quite cheap now but still.
 
I don't think its fair to blanket the entire R2 market because some of our releases are better than the R1 versions. Ironically one of those that you have picked out i.e. Millenium Actress - the UK version has an exclusive English dub. The same applies to GITS2: Innocence.

Also - its not fair comparing our Eva Plantinum Boxset with the US version because of the gap between release dates - give it another year and our Eva Platinum Boxset will be much more affordable.

There are many other UK releases that are superior, you just need to look a little harder. Furthermore, its redundant to complain about the UK DVD market if you yourself refuse to support it - its not going to get better if the so called "fans" would rather import. Not to mention anime fans in the UK - if you want more people to be fans of anime over here, then supporting the domestic industry is the only way to go. We need to see more DVDs in the shops, on TV and the only way that is going to happen is if we continue to show support. Importing is backwards and futureless. It's important to me that we see more and more British anime fans.
 
While I try to support the UK industry by buying the odd DVD when I see it cheap(usually movies) but I do usually import. I think I was originally forced into importing because of the poor quality of the UK Stand Alone Complex subtitles that Manga did for the first season DVD's. I also won't buy DVD's released by MVM because most of their releases look poor quality and are usually the most expensive in the shops.

I tried to go back to buying UK releases with the release of Millennium Actress but was again put off by the fact that the DVD didn't have subtitles that synced up to the Japanese audio(they synced up to the English dub). The addition of the UK exclusive English dub didn't help as I thought it was badly casted, sounded rushed and poorly mixed. I quickly took that back and imported Dreamworks release. Millennium Actress is now one of my favourite movies but the UK release is very poor and they have not corrected the mistake. While it does have an English dub and the boxart looks prettier than the US version the US version is still a superior release.

Lately though i've been buying more UK releases though only ADV as they are almost identical releases to the US in terms of quality.
 
I'd rather buy stuff from the UK than America, so people complain that the anime is not enuogh in the UK and the fanbase needs to be spread across TV yet you import from America, etc. 'K. I get it.
 
Paul said:
Also - its not fair comparing our Eva Plantinum Boxset with the US version because of the gap between release dates - give it another year and our Eva Platinum Boxset will be much more affordable.
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Also note that the Eva Platinum we are getting is far superior to the one noted, which is the budget thinpak of the series. The UK version will have all of the special features from the original UK and Japanese plaltinum collections as well as exclusive packaging. The US thinpak has no special features at all, just the episodes themselves.

The other point that people seem to overlook is the difference in our two economies. We currently have an extremely strong pound whilst the US has a relatively weak dollar. The prices of US releases, on terms relative to average income of the two countries, are actually extremely close to one-another but our strong pound makes importing extremely favourable economically.

I personally don't import much anime from America purely on principal and only then if I suspect that there is unlikely to be a release of a particular title in the UK. (I will normally buy the UK release if it does appear however.)
 
Area 88, America's economy is horribly large enough as it is and though I'm not stupid and admit a lot of those points are accurate, I'll do my best to support the UK animè and manga industry as best I can.

Also, I'd only ever import if animè became my one and only interest, but luckily I have a few, so despite a few quality differences I'm more than happy to make a few concessions here and there if its for the "greater good".

Personally, I don't see the objective of this post to begin with (its counter productive as far as I'm concerned)? I notice people who post material like this seem to have the agenda to try just want people like myself to feel dissatisfied with our own purchaes.

That's the distinct feeling I always get. People should worry about their own financial investments and stay mute about the rest.
 
The only way the UK anime scene is going to get bigger is if people support it.

Anyway, importing takes too long for my liking. I've been waiting a long time for one particular DVD to arrive from America...

I'm beginning to think you work for someone or another, Area 88 =P
 
Espy said:
I'm beginning to think you work for someone or another, Area 88 =P
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There is a distinct flavour to the writing isn't there?

Perhaps this is a new corporate ploy the US are undertaking? Going to entertainment forums in other territories and proclaiming that home products and services are inferior and that people should invest abroad (or to be precise, in the US)?

Perhaps their oil supplies are a bit iffy at the mo so there thinking of new ways to boost their economy?

Who knows? :wink: :lol:
 
Rukario said:
I'd rather buy stuff from the UK than America, so people complain that the anime is not enuogh in the UK and the fanbase needs to be spread across TV yet you import from America, etc. 'K. I get it.
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I too would rather buy stuff from the UK than America...but I often don't, sadly. Pricing is certainly one of the issues. For a while I used to buy the Australian R2 discs as they were often the same releases as the UK ones but at a much cheaper price but that sorted of tailed off after a while as well.

Looking at my shelf out of the corner of my eye now the majority of those that stand out are R3 spines, which I guess shows how my tastes have changed over the past couple of years.
 
Project A-Ko is a non-entity. Millenium Actress has been far cheaper in the past, despite having been available for only a few years less, the US platinum collection is NOT comparable as it's a thinpack, featureless edition versus a premium feature-packed edition.

The first post is one poorly disguised advert and the links should be removed and the member banned.
 
Something Area 88 seems to have forgotten is that often in the UK there are more episodes per DVD. Panda Z came out on 6 discs in the states, but is coming out on only 2 here, Gundam Seed Destiny is 12 discs in the states but 10 here. So there are advantages to geting home grown stuff.
Personally if i'm going to import i go for Madman (OZ, NZ) as its often better than US or Brit stuff
 
kupoartist said:
The first post is one poorly disguised advert and the links should be removed and the member banned.
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The IP address says different - Area88 is a UK resident and besides, this is a fine chance for us to prove the ardent importers wrong. It's amusing when UK based anime fans delude themselves with such old hat, completely redundant reasons for not supporting their domestic market, and even try to spread their broken propaganda to others.

I'll remove the links, but I'm interested to see if we get a response from Area88. Lets hear some critisism of UK DVDs from someone who clearly doesn't follow or indeed, buy them.
 
Let me expand on a few my points i made in my original post.

For starters the UK market is a sub-license market. This means that UK anime companies license anime titles through the US anime companies. So for instance MVM will buy the rights to Riding Bean through Animeigo. This means the UK market is dominated by the choices the US anime companeis make when licensing anime directly from the source, the Japanese anime companies. If a US company decides not to license a series like Dirty Pair tv then there is no chance of seeing it released over in the UK.

Naturally the US market is bigger than the UK market as it has had more time to grow. But it will never be as big as the US market due to the sheer difference in population.

In conclusion to my first point, by supporting the US market your supporting the main english speaking market to which there is a greatest chance of seeing your desired titles especially the niche or older anime.


Next there is the video quality. Ntsc to Pal conversions plague the UK industry and anyone who is familiar with the process will know that any region 2 title released using this method will be inferior to the region 1 NTSC counterpart. Just look at some of the screencaps you see on the web and your see what i mean. Other problems with ntsc to pal conversions include the increase in audio pitch and the decrease in runtime. For me this is simply unacceptable and was one of the main reasons why i became so interested in importing.

This is a complicated issue and it's a notorious problem of the PAL market. There are far better websites that explain the problems of NTSC to PAL conversion than i could ever do. I recommend having a look.

Issues such as price, choice, availability are obvious and therefore do not need expanding on. I am happy to go in to any of these issues further should the need arise.


Now to awnser some comments and questions more directly:

Rukario said:
I'd rather buy stuff from the UK than America, so people complain that the anime is not enuogh in the UK and the fanbase needs to be spread across TV yet you import from America, etc. 'K. I get it.
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Why let patriotism cloud your mind? While it's nice to see anime exposure being spread worldwide, i would much rather see the US market continue to grow for obvious reasons explained above.

WTFDaveMustaine said:
I tried to go back to buying UK releases with the release of Millennium Actress but was again put off by the fact that the DVD didn't have subtitles that synced up to the Japanese audio(they synced up to the English dub).
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Indeed and the technical term for this is called 'Dubtitles'. They subtitle the English audio track rather than the Japanese. Since the English dub almost always takes liberties it means the translation suffers in result.

Of course i come toexpect this of Manga Entertainment whos are often referred to by the nickname Mangle. It really is a shame they are one of the biggest anime companies in the UK as they're quality control really is appauling, i can name many examples where there releases are ruined by glitches and poor decisions.

Hovis! said:
Personally, I don't see the objective of this post to begin with (its counter productive as far as I'm concerned)? I notice people who post material like this seem to have the agenda to try just want people like myself to feel dissatisfied with our own purchaes.
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I just want to increase awareness and spread my aquired knowledge. Although my post is very negative if you primarily buy UK releases, my main objective was to show the positives of importing.

If you do end up feeling disatisfied with your UK purchases then my work here is done as you've seen the better alternative.

Espy said:
Anyway, importing takes too long for my liking. I've been waiting a long time for one particular DVD to arrive from America...
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Most of my dvds take around 5 days when order from Dvd Pacific using Airmail and 14 days when using Surface Mail. The shipping time via Airmail from the US to UK is almost the same from Play.com (Jersey) to UK. Remember patience is a virtue and in my opinion this isn't really an issue to begin with.

Hovis! said:
Perhaps this is a new corporate ploy the US are undertaking? Going to entertainment forums in other territories and proclaiming that home products and services are inferior and that people should invest abroad (or to be precise, in the US)? l:
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Haha, a wonderful idea! I think i should target Australia next...

mr-brett said:
This is the second thread that Area 88 has advertised DvdPacific.com so you guy might be right.
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I can't help it if Dvd Pacific are one of the cheapest on the internet. Maybe i should have used DeepDiscountdvd since they pretty much match their prices as well.
 
Personally, i've never imported any DVDs at all and whilst I can appreciate the arguments for both sides, I think the only time that I personally would ever import anything, is if there is absolutley no way in hell, that the anime that I want will ever be released in the UK.

People moan about how small the selection is in the UK and then go and import DVDs from the US or Japan, even if the disk they want has had a UK release. How is this going to prove to the companies that there is a growing want for the product over here. These companies are going to look at their sales figures, go ' Bugger this! These arn't selling well so we may as well not bother.' and never release another anime ever again. :x

This can only lead back to the dark times. :cry:
 
i am in the middle. i have a even collection of import and domestic dvd's. as some may have already stated i prefer some imports as it includes many LE items and such for peeps who like to collect those kind of things (like me lol)
the other reason why i buy UK dvd's is to show support for the industry here and also is because if i have missed the US releasr then i'd get it form here lol.

but to the actual question.

i wouldnt say its superior, as the US anime market has been there for a much longer time than here. also the obvious large scale of america means only one thing...more target audience's are going to be buying the stuff. so more people will support it there.
and because of that the rise in the market means more cool goodies for them, which in turn makes some UK fans pissed to see their fave anime not getting the red carpet treatment here so they import.

but like tasker has said above.
the only way we can get to the same kind of level as the US is to supporting the industry here.

i must say, the UK industry has grown very large and is doing extreamley well, cinsidering how we are limited to the number of anime releases, publishers, companies and so on. and also how small the uk industry is compared to the US or other places.

all i can say is that i hope for the industry to do well here.
 
Yes, let's all buy DVDs from America so UK anime DVDs never exist anymore and this site will pretty much remain useless. Since the key part of the site is in the name of the site itself, Anime UK News. Then the DVDs sales being somewhere between low to non-existant, the whole thing will pull back and BAM, no anime on TV.... or something like that. >_>
 
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